Writing a little is better than writing nothing

I was reminded today of one of my favorite writing quotes, by Roger Zelazny. Simple, practical, and perfect for NaNoWriMo:

I try to write every day. I used to try to write four times a day, minimum of three sentences each time. It doesn’t sound like much but it’s kinda like the hare and the tortoise. If you try that several times a day you’re going to do more than three sentences, one of them is going to catch on. You’re going to say “Oh boy!” and then you just write. You fill up the page and the next page But you have a certain minimum so that at the end of the day, you can say Hey I wrote four times today, three sentences, a dozen sentences. Each sentence is maybe twenty word long. That’s 240 words which is a page of copy, so at least I didn’t goof off completely today. I got a page for my efforts and tomorrow it might be easier because I’ve moved as far as I have.

Roger Zelazny (1937-1995), Interview, Phlogiston #43 (1995)

Sometimes during NaNo, you just can’t work yourself up into sitting down for the hour and a half, two hours, whatever, to kick out the day’s 1700 words. But sitting down and doing three sentences, four times? That’s easy, 5-10 minutes each.

And, at worse, if that’s all you do, then you’re a bit behind in the word count, but you kept the momentum going, kept the brain thinking about the story.

Doing Write

***Dave writes stuff. Here's his world of (non-blog) writing.

Writing a little is better than writing nothing

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